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Mad Max: Fury Road



Mad Max: Fury Road

Of all the franchises I have watched over the years, one of my favorites is the Mad Max franchise. Now some of my favorite films went on to spawn multiple sequels, but a lot of them were not great as a series. Jaws should have been a stand alone movie or at the very least stopped at Jaws II. Dirty Harry was great for the first few movies but was never as good past the The Enforcer. And while the first three Romero zombie movies are brilliant, they went to hell with the mediocre Land of the Dead and the ABYSMAL Survivor of the Dead. Mad Max on the other hand was a very strong trilogy for me. I liked the first Mad Max quite a bit, LOVED the Road Warrior, and I enjoyed Beyond Thunderdome. To top it off, at one point in my life The Road Warrior was my favorite movie. I mean what is there not to like? It was an iconic post apocalyptic movie, staring Mel Gibson (before the scandals), had loads of pre CGI high octane action, and some very memorable characters. You had The Gyro Captain and the Feral Kid, and villains in Wes and Humongous. So when I heard years ago in 2009 that they were going to make another Mad Max film, I was PISSED! I mean it had been decades since the last film, and I have a generally very negative view on remakes and reboots. Sometimes you get a great remake like Zack Snyder did with Dawn of the Dead. Then again he also rebooted the Superman franchise, and I HATED that movie. So it can be a double edged sword. But then I learned that George Miller, the original director of the trilogy was returning to helm the project. At that point and time I began to have some hope. I also heard he was going to primarily use stunt drivers and real vehicles as opposed to CGI. Again, that was a plus. I saw some pictures of the production and I thought they were pretty good, but nothing great. But then I saw the first trailer. After that, I began to have real hope. I mean it looked action packed and awesome! So I walked into this film with expectations that it was going to be good. What I got was two hours of high octane insanity…

And…

It…

Was…

GLORIOUS!

THIS is what I wanted to see in a new Mad Max movie! How does it stake up in the franchise? Well fuel up the V8 Interceptor with nitro and load your double barrel as we speed along with Mad Max: Fury Road!

The film opens with back story on how the world came to be. A world plunged into darkness and chaos by war and flame. The world as we knew it ended and what rose from the wastelands was the cut throat world of struggle and survival. A world where death is actually a sweet relief and the strongest survive. Max (Tom Hardy) is introduced here as he is being pursued by members of the mobile army of the main villain Immortan Joe, the warlord of one of many gangs in the wasteland. Max is captured and is kept alive to be used as a “blood bag” for Joe’s army the War Boys. Immortan Joe runs a place called The Citadel, near the two neighboring towns of Bullet Farm and Gas Town. Here he is the ruler and cult leader. Their religion seems to be partially based on old Norse ways with its references to Valhalla and warrior roots. But this religion has more references to engines, chorme, and of course Immortan Joe appoints himself as the god. And as such he gets to sleep with all the women he wants, and have as many wives as he wants. And he only chooses the best, whether they want to marry him or not. This is where Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) comes in. A once loyal servant to the warlord, she betrays Immortan Joe by smuggling his wives in a War Rig away from him during a routine gas and ammo run. Thus begins the chase where Immortan Joe tries to recover his women and seek his revenge. Max is brought along to provide blood for one of Joe’s men, but he escapes and teams up with Furiosa. The rest of the film is our heroes engaging in chase scenes and gun fights. AND I LOVED IT!

This film could only be done well with the careful direction of George Miller. If they had let anyone else make this movie it would have sucked! George does reboot his own work, but he does so with love and respect for the old trilogy. He does so by making numerous references and nods to the older movies. When Mad is captured, he crashes his vehicle in a similar fashion that was done when he crashed his V8 Interceptor in The Road Warrior. Hell, the car looked just like his vehicle in Mad Max and the Road Warrior! It even had the giant gas tank in the back! The cars in the movie are also done in the same spirit of the two previous films. The vehicles are supped up, tricked out, highly customized and reflect the brutal personality of the drivers of the wasteland. They even brought back the concept of the 18 wheeler rig from The Road Warrior. Max also keeps his origin story from the first Mad Max. His wife and daughter were killed, and now he is a broken shell of a man. The gear worn by the warlord and his men are in the same spirit of the last movies, but there is more emphasis on chrome and metal, then black leather S&M gear. But the outfits are still more then creative and fit the Mad Max universe. Plus the face paint with the white face and black eyes reminded me of Beyond Thunderdome. There are also smaller nods like the music box (from The Road Warrior), the midget and hulking brute assistants to Immortan Joe (which I took as a subtle reference to Master Blaster in Beyond Thunderdome), Max’s sawed off double barrel shotgun (all of the other movies), and the motorcycle raiders in Fury Road are a nod to the original motorcycle gang in the first Mad Max. Speaking of which, Immortan Joe is played by Hugh Keays-Byrne, who was the biker gang leader Toecutter of Mad Max! So the original villain of Mad Max is now the main villain of Fury Road!





I didn’t even notice this until I was looking at the film’s IMDB page! Blew my mind! Keeping the spirit of the original Mad Max trilogy alive and well! I love ya George Miller!

But this is still a different film the other movies. I mean Mel Gibson has been replaced by Tom Hardy, but he does a great job as Max. And we introduce Furiosa as a new hardass female fighter. Think of her as a newer version of the archer lady in the Road Warrior, only with more depth and character. But these are differences in casting, which is to be expected since the last Mad Max movie was made 30 years ago. And these are not differences in spirit. This is still very much a Mad Max movie. The film combines the revenge angle of the original Mad Max, with the mobile army of The Road Warrior, and has a leader of a post apocalyptic settlement like in Thunderdome. The biggest differences here are in the production values. The Mad Max films were never expensive films to make. The first one was made for less than half a million dollars. The Road Warrior cost around 4.5 million and Thunderdome cost 12 million to make. This time someone dumped 150 million dollars on George’s lawn and said “Go nuts!” And he did! The budget created more crazy vehicles, more crazy outfits, more stunts, more crashes, more explosions, and lots more action on a scale bigger than the other films! Not only have the vehicles gotten bigger and more numerous, they have gotten more creative. One of my favorite vehicles in the movie is one where a blind guitar player is held onto a platform in front of a wall of speakers by bungee cords playing heavy metal music to inspire the troops like a psychotic drummer boy! How cool is that?!?!? And the best part is this film is about 90% live action. Certain scenes were CGI, like the big exterior shots of the Citadel, certain key crashes, Furiosa's robotic hand and a few other bits here and there, but for the most part the film features real vehicles driven by stunt men for real action. And since other film franchises dealing with cars tend to focus much more on the CGI then these days, it is very refreshing to see a return to live action stunts. Plus, there are still quite a few moments that lend itself for character development, helping the film feel more complete. Now the dialogue might throw you off since there is not a whole lot of it. This film does not have a lot of big speeches, monologues, or heavy back and forth between characters. And the dialogue is spoken in a lot of simple words and phrases, much of it in an almost tribal or broken English. This is what one would expect from a society where schools that teach proper grammar are a thing of the past. But the dialogue is not a hallmark of the Mad Max franchise. You don’t expect Shakespeare from Mad Max, you want action! And this movie has that in spades! Remember how cool the final chase scene in The Road Warrior was? Well this movie is like a 2 hour version of that chase scene. The majority of the film is Max, Furiosa and company riding a large 18 wheeler through the desert with Immortan Joe and his men on their heels! Bullets, chases, crashes, explosions, and stunt work galore! I can’t say enough how awesome this movie was!

Now there are a few nitpicks. Sometimes I could not understand what the hell Immortan Joe was saying. This is a combination of the respirator thing he was wearing combined with his Aussie accent, but that was not a major distraction. This was not Bane in The Dark Knight Rises trying to do Nolan’s exposition; Joe had a few lines here or there, but he was never trying to do a big speech. So that was not that big a deal. Also it is kind of sad that this was not filmed in Australia. Instead of being filmed in the deserts of Broken Hill or Coober Pedy, this movie was shot in the African nation of Namibia. Now the desert look was awesome and I am not going to complain, but it does feel a bit weird that this Australian franchise was not shot in the Outback. But these are nitpicks and should not distract someone from watching the film.

As you can tell I am a HUGE Mad Max fan. And I am delighted that this film lived up to the trailer. In fact if I were to rate this up against the original films, I would say that this is my second favorite film in the franchise. The Road Warrior will always be king in my heart, and while I do love the original Mad Max, this film just has more action. In fact this is currently my favorite film of the year. And when you are beating out an Avenger’s movie, you are doing something very right! I will be seeing this film again when I get the chance in IMAX 3D, maybe tomorrow after work. This film comes highly recommended from The Gunslinger himself. See it now!